Wayned24
ArboristSite Member
I also have Buckeye Rural.
Electric Bill High
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I also have Buckeye Rural.
During the middle of summer while running a 4-ton Armstrong electric central air conditioner, I cannot recall my monthly electric bill ever going over $200. If it did, it was because of service charges and state sales tax, both of which are unrelated to actual electricity consumption. I suspect you need an energy monitor check on that OWB pump, assuming that is the only major electrical appliance operating.
Maybe of interest to some, maybe not. When I built my air handler for my heating system I mounted a fan switch (thermal snap disc type) out of an old gas furnace about 3" above the coil, vertical air handler. This way I have the thermostat in the house wired to start the circulater pump when it calls for heat & the forced air blower comes on only after the coil gets hot. I designed & built this way to help conserve electricity & so far after 7 years I'm happy with the results.
Wayned24
ArboristSite Member
I’ve been keeping track since I got my bill. Granted, we haven’t had any zero degree days, but we are averaging about 26 kWh/day.. according to the “actual” electric reading on my bill, we were averaging 76 kWh/day the last two months.. not really sure why it was spiked so high?
Welcome to the forum! Having grown up in Illinois, it's hard to believe that houses are being heated there with electricity, resistance heat. Natural gas is everywhere in Illinois and propane must be available. Back in the late 40's and early 50's, Dad heated our house in Decatur with coal that was mined in central Illinois. That same coal heated the boilers at the Abbott power plant in Champaign that took care of the University.
Times do change, but heating a house entirely with electric resistant heat in Illinois I would never have predicted. I guess in Illinois you are paying about $400 a month at 9 cents a KWH to heat and light a 3000 sq ft home. Electric heat pumps don't work very well at 0 F.
All electric heat in western N.Y. will run you like 600$ or more a month. Natural gas is the way to go. I wish I had it. I use minimal propane but the electric bill still kills me. Natural gas is all around this area just not here. We don't have cable either. Phone lines and dish tv.
Natural gas here runs me 52 cents a therm or a little over a $5 an MCF. An MCF produces a million BTUs. Twenty MCF is about the same heat as an average cord of wood (efficiency ignored). I used 30 MCF of NG last month in very cold conditions and burned my wood stove while doing it. The NG also took care of water heat and drying clothes. Avg temp was about 20 F below last year and about 10 F below normal. So, my gas and electric bill added together ran about $290 with sales tax and other charges added in.
My neighbor heats with a heat pump and his electric bill was $550, even after a discount for being "an all-electric home". He uses NG as a backup only if the heat pump checks out when it's cold. There were several days last month when his heat pump shut down, so add another $60 for the backup NG furnace. So, his utility bills last month were about twice what mine were.
Take it from there.
Being an hvac guy natural gas is the way to go. If you are heating a small open cabin with a mini split it might be worth it to use electric heat but probably not. I had natural gas at my old house it ran me 200 a month in the winter for a 70k but boiler set at 62. There must have been zero insulation. The boiler that came out was run on heating oil that was 500 a month. That's on top of a 140$ electric bill. This house that I've had for 5 years has cost me my electric bill of average 140$ a month and I pay 25$ a month to the propane company. They owe me many tanks of propane. This is all because I burn wood.
aaron
ArboristSite Operative
Running a heat pump here. Last bill was $230.00. 2400 sf split level, t-stat at 67f.. Burn my Buck 74 in lower lvl at night for supplemental and all day weekends. Heat pump is a newer Lennox 21 seer two stage
2000 sq ft single level
I don't run my furnace much
Infared heaters usually
My bill last month was a 100.00
My friend in a single wide 980 sq ft
Hers went from 126.00 previously
To 506.00
It's crazy she can't afford that many fixed income can't afford this
No ryme no reason
Most have doubled here many of
My neighbors burn wood
Strictly for heat no other heat source
And there's doubled too
There is a group trying to get a class action
Lawsuit against Appalachian power
Going i hope they do
They'll lie about mine next month I'm sure.
Remote reading meters give them license to steal for now
They must hope customer's won't notice
I don't run my furnace much
Infared heaters usually
My bill last month was a 100.00
My friend in a single wide 980 sq ft
Hers went from 126.00 previously
To 506.00
It's crazy she can't afford that many fixed income can't afford this
No ryme no reason
Most have doubled here many of
My neighbors burn wood
Strictly for heat no other heat source
And there's doubled too
There is a group trying to get a class action
Lawsuit against Appalachian power
Going i hope they do
They'll lie about mine next month I'm sure.
Remote reading meters give them license to steal for now
They must hope customer's won't notice
We have a ground source heat pump. Well water transfers 53* (?) temp to freon (or whatever), the freon goes thru a compressor which kicks the temp of the freon up, then transfers that heat to forced air, which cycles quite often (three times or four times per hour, whatever it is set at)
The "all electric discount". (No hard numbers here but I'll give you an idea.) We pay the regular rate for say 300 kWh. Then the discount kicks in above that. Great...but... the discount stops 300 kWh later. The penny savings per kWh will hardly buy you a beer. Anything above 600 kWh is regular rate.
Also, we bought the bit about almost free hot water, as it is pre heated by the heat pump. Another but. We needed an 80 gal. electric hot water heater for the system to function properly. Not two forty in series, one eighty gallon. Who uses eighty gallons of hot water? Oh but it is almost free. If I took the heating electric element out of the hot water heater I seriously doubt we would have anything close to warm water let alone hot.
Would love to meter the electric use of just the hot water heater and just the heat pump to post on here.
The heat pump does have the benefit of air conditioning in the summer if needed for a few days or weeks in Michigan.
When we built the other option was propane.
Twenty years later there is now natural gas at the road.
Our main heat is wood during the coldest months after taking a break from it for several years when I was working away from home.
Our previous home, for fifteen years, was wood heat, with a propane wall furnace backup to keep the pipes from freezing when gone for a weekend. We had four 100 lb. bottles hooked up after we ran out with two a couple times so we could change out two at a time. That and heat tapes on everything. Basically a summer cottage, no wall insulation at all, the old metal framed casement windows that iced up heavily, all on a concrete slab. We blocked up the fireplace with stone work and set a Vogelzang box stove in front of it that needed reloaded at 3:00 am. Had one Stihl 042 and rented a splitter once a year. We loved it at the time.
greenskeeper
ArboristSite Operative
run just the OWB for a month and see what the bill looks like. chances are your auxiliary electric is kicking on
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